We arrived home in total darkness. Welcome to Daylight Savings. As I quickly calculated what would be an apporpriate bedtime, the girls began to gather up their things from the day, ready to get inside. Wren held back a moment. “Can I talk to you about something…just you and me?” she asked.
“You’re favoriting her again,” Adi chimed in. “You always have secret talks. What are you going to talk about now?” she asked, her second childness screaming out loud and proud.
“I don’t even know,” I replied. “Please just go inside.”
Shocklingly, she obliged. I turned to Wren, thoughts of what she might want to discuss swirling through my brain.
She blurted out something so middle school that I felt my body relax. I surpressed a grin as I asked her how she felt about this event. Before we got ready to go inside, she said, “I just wanted to tell you. I didn’t want it to feel like I was lying.”
As Wren has embarked on middle school, there have been many moments like this that let me know that some of the obstacles we have faced in the past, the coaching that I gave that sometimes felt like it was falling on deaf ears, is actually paying off. I’ll admit that there have been moments where I thought we’d always be raging at each other, that I had already ruined us.
But days like today, give me a glimse at the person Wren is becoming and while I know there will be moments of rage in our future, I haven’t ruined it all yet. There are somethings that I’m doing right.
Where There Is Joy 
Jessica,
You are doing many, probably most, things right, and it sounds as though Wren thinks so, too. Otherwise she would not have confided in you. Give yourself lots of grace. You’ve earned it.
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What a gift that Wren turns to you to share her worries and concerns! Clearly you have spent plenty of time laying that oh-so-important groundwork, and now it’s paying off.
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Parenting is hard. You are doing a great job….And you are wise to be realistic…there will be beautiful moments and hard ones. They are all part of the journey.
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Oh, that is fantastic that she is turning to you to talk. Being a parent is the hardest job, but you are doing things right to keep those lines open.
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This slice at first seems like it is about a daughter asking for advise from mom, without her sister listening in. As I read on, it seems to also be about a tired mom and her doubts about guiding this small human. Your word choice of raging and ruined are so honest. I’m hoping once you wrote, you started to feel more positive. Because this reader knows parenting is filled with ups and downs. But for a small human to have seek out and trust and open up to their mom – that is a HUGE win for a mom of a middle schooler. Congrats on being a super mom to your girls.
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Your slice is a real slice of the many challenges for everyone in a family as its members grow, change and navigate the tenuous world we live in each and every day. You are a super mom for sure when your middle schooler seeks your opinion or even asks you to listen!
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You’ve really captured that parenting feeling here … the feeling like you aren’t doing a lot of things right, but at least there are a few. But I think most certainly there are more things you are doing right than you think especially if your middle schooler is confiding in you. 🙂
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